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To: Talisker; MyTwoCopperCoins
As well, Hindu beliefs existed thousands of years before the coming of Jesus Christ, and therefore hardly represent any reaction whatever towards Christianity

Not quite. Modern day Hinduism bears little to no resemblance to Vedic Hinduism with it's worshipping of Aryanic gods like Mithra, Varuna and especially Indra (the god of thunder and war, analogous to Thor or, in the form of Dyaus Pitr, to Zeus).

Hinduism reacted to the philosophy of Jainism and Buddhism by incorporating ahimsa and vegetarianism (remember that the Rig Veda does talk about eating meat too).

It then absorbed many of the Greek religious thoughts (which, since ancient Greek religion was another sister religion of the pan-Aryan religion)

Then, it was influenced by Christianity in the early centuries of the common era.

how? A very clear one is the gradual "decay" of the status of the Asuras. In the Rig Vedas, the Asuras are just another family of supernatural beings, like the Daevas. Slowly, in the Christian era under the influence of Christian and Zoroastrian ideas of demons, the Asuras are now purely considered demonic figures.


Remember that the ancient Indo-European/Aryan religion had TWO families of gods -- most clearly depicted in the Germanic religion (the most primitive) which retained these as the Aesir and Vanir families of gods.

In India, as we saw, the Devas got the upper hand and the Asuras were relegated to demons

in the sister land of Iran, the opposite happened -- the Ahuras (in Avestani and Persian, the "s" of Sanskrit becomes "h", hence to the Persians, the people of the Sindhu river were Hindus) got supremacy and the daevas become minor spirits. Then Zoroaster came along and acknowledged ONE spirit AHURA Mazda as the one God.

We mustn't forget of course that ZOroastrianism under the Persians influenced the Hebrew religion in 400 BC when the Israelites were freed by the Persians.

The Zoroastrians gave the concept of angels and a messiah to the Hebrews.

And Christianity, in it's turn came back to India to give the Hindu culture the concept of a trinity (Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva).
72 posted on 07/30/2009 10:38:30 AM PDT by Cronos (Ceterum censeo, Mecca et Medina delendae sunt + Jindal 2K12)
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To: Cronos
Not quite. Modern day Hinduism bears little to no resemblance to Vedic Hinduism with it's worshipping of Aryanic gods like Mithra, Varuna and especially Indra... incorporating ahimsa and vegetarianism... absorbed many of the Greek religious thoughts... influenced by Christianity...Christianity, in it's turn came back to India to give the Hindu culture the concept of a trinity (Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva).

What you describe is a worship-centric, accretionary historical process which is actually peripheral to the Sanatan Dharma philosophy that makes up the core of what is called "Hinduism" today.

The Sanatan Dharma is the philosophy not only that everything is God, but also that God has become everything and everyone, and so the process of "salvation" consists in "realizing" that one's own, personal, essential Self is none other than God. This essential Self is not the egoic, limited self that identifies with a particular body, mind and personal history. The sun and it's rays, the ocean and it's waves, and similiar examples are given to illustrate how a center disburses itself into the illusion of separateness.

Thus what is called "worship," from pre-vedic, through vedic and up to modern times, is seen as nothing other than an aide to focus the mind on deeper and more profound aspects of God with which one is already a part, yet disconnected from in experience. On the other hand, Hinduism teaches that when the mind takes an incarnation of God as a focal point, that incarnation has the power to bring a person to the full realization of God. Which is why, when a Christian tells a Hindu that they focus on Jesus Christ alone, the Hindu sees no problem with that - in fact, from a Hindu point of view, it is very efficient.

So when you describe a historical accretion of apparent influences on Hinduism, you are not describing any change whatever in the core Sanatan Dharma. You are merely describing historical influences on the interpretation of various manifestations of God, and descriptions of divine behaviors that Hinduism already accepted as the "normal" behavior of an infinitely creative Divine. That's why Hinduism could accept Jesus Christ so completely - He was seen as another world-manifestation Divine expression of the Lord, within a framework where such world-manifestations of the Lord are necessary to change world history. In Hinduism, examples of such other manifestations are Krishna and Rama, and there are many others as well.

In addition, something so fundamental as the Trinity is hardly new to Hinduism. Even before Brahma, Vishnu & Shiva, the concepts of God's powers of creation, protection and destruction/rebirth were fundamental, because of their requirement for rational thought about the universe across time.

96 posted on 07/30/2009 4:29:45 PM PDT by Talisker (When you find a turtle on top of a fence post, you can be damn sure it didn't get there on it's own.)
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To: Cronos

You can pack a lot into a post. Always a pleasure to chew on.


115 posted on 07/31/2009 11:39:43 AM PDT by swarthyguy (MEAT, the new tobacco. Your right to eat meat ends where my planetary ecosystem begins.)
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